Cassandra and Leliana shared a look while Cullen and Josephine only looked at her in confusion. Azalea stuttered and leaned forward on the table. "Is…Is Thedas a territory? Somewhere up north? Maybe in Canada…yeah…I was in the Capital Waste, that's not too far away." Looking up at the others, she liked her lips and began packing her things. With a shaky breath, she pulled her bag off the table and swung it onto her back. "Do you have map?"

Cullen nodded and turned to the table behind them. "Thedas isn't a city. It's the continent that we're on right now." He assured while laying two large maps on the table. He pointed to a region of mountains on the right map. "We're here, in the Frostback Mountains." He moved his hand to the other map and pointed to a large empty portion. "This is the Wastes, where we assumed you meant…Where is Amaireka? Is it a settlement over here?" Cullen looked up at Azalea, brows furrowed.

"Um…" Azalea looked over the map, panic and confusion settling in her chest. "Th-this isn't where we are…We're on the continent North America, in the United States of America. We can't be anywhere else, that wouldn't make sense…" her throat tightened and spots flashed in front of her eyes. Azalea ran a shaky hand over her mouth, eye moving frantically across the map. A hand softly touched her shoulder and Azalea jerked away. Josephine was next to her with a look of concern on her face. Azalea saw her mouth move, but no words came out. Her world span and Azalea suddenly found herself outside. There was a buzzing in her ears as she walked through Haven; she could make out the shapes of people but not their faces, not their voices. Colors blurred until she finally collapsed to her knees, she could vaguely make out the cold snow she knelt in as she looked over a hill; below her was the catapults that she had often times spent examining.

Letting herself fall back she stared at clouds slowly passing by. Thoughts raced around her mind, giving her a headache. Something large and warm plopped down next to her and snuggled into her side, startling her from her mind. A soft snort came from the thing next to her. Azalea's eyes focused on it and she found herself staring down at Dogmeat. "Hey buddy…we—we're pretty far from home it seems." Her throat tightened, choking her. Dogmeat scooted closer to her and licked her chin. "We're…so far from home…" Azalea ignored the soft crunching that was slowly growing louder.

A shadow fell over her, forcing herself to look up Azalea came to look at Josephine standing over her. "I told the others to let me talk to you." She said slowly. "You ran out of the war room so fast we weren't sure what happened." Josephine sent her a soft, unsure smile before coming to kneel next to her. Minutes passed and the tanned woman simply looked out over Haven. Azalea was grateful for the silence; it allowed her time to breath. She ran a hand down Dogmeat's neck, over and over. They couldn't be on another continent, their Overseers—whatever they were calling themselves—had obviously created a synthetic world for these people to live in. They were deep underground in a Vault of some kind, that wasn't a real sky, it was a projection; and they had vents hidden all around that helped simulate weather and seasons. 'Yeah, that's it'. Despite this reasoning, Azalea couldn't make herself believe it.

Josephine turned to Azalea and grabbed her hand. "Are you alright?" She asked. "I understand what a panic attack feels like, don't worry it will pass." She ran her fingers through Azalea's hair. "What exactly caused your panic?"

Azalea took a deep breath and looked down at Dogmeat. "We—we just can't possibly be on another continent…" closing her eyes she swallowed hard. Josephine grabbed her hands and squeezed.

"It's alright…This, Amarika that you're from, what is it like?" Josephine asked.

"America…"She muttered. Azalea paused and thought over what she would say. "It's…it's awful. The air is toxic, so is the water…Everything in all the land is either mutated or dead; or they mutate so much they die." Looking down at her lap, Azalea flicked her tongue over the gape in her teeth. "You can't go a mile without running into a raider, or a super mutant. Feral ghouls wander around, attacking anything that moves. Of course this just causes prejudice for the other sane ghouls who are trying to survive like the rest of us." Azalea chuckled darkly, thinking back to all the times she encountered a ghoul who thought she was there to kill them.

"It can't be all bad."

"No, even among all the rot and filth, there was always those good moments." Azalea smiled up at Josephine. "Be it getting lucky and finding a forgot food stash, or camping out with another group for the night and actually waking up with all your things…There are a few good things." Wiping her eyes Azalea nudged Dogmeat off of her lap and stood. Looking down at Josephine she tried to smile, but it came out as a grimace. "If what you all are saying is true…then we have no home…so, I just can't believe it."

Standing Josephine dusted off her skirt and motioned for Azalea to follow her. "As long as you are here, you will have a home. And when this is over, we will find you a more permanent residence." Azalea nodded and smiled at Josephine. The woman was too good, she wouldn't have lasted a minute in the Waste. Josephine turned suddenly, "Now, while we have much to discuss, I think we should all break for lunch, yes? How does that sound?" Azalea smiled at the other woman and nodded. Lunch sounded delicious.

Azalea leaned back in her seat and watched the people in the tavern. Josephine had recommended they eat there instead of taking their food and parting ways. Cullen, Leliana, and Cassandra had been waiting at the base of the hill, making sure to keep the civilians at bay. Cassandra had tried to say something but with a nudge from Leliana she stopped short and simply followed behind Azalea. They had been in the tavern for about five minutes before Varric joined them, he sat a tankard of ale in front of Azalea before taking a seat from across from her. "I don't know what is going on, but you look like you could use a pick me up." He had said, before turning to Dogmeat pawing at his thigh, begging for scraps. Azalea agreed with him.

Sipping on the ale, Azalea thought over her current predicament. It was impossible; they couldn't be on another continent. Perhaps an island of the coast…after all, the only maps she had to go off of where old pre war maps, the world's terrain was bound to change in two hundred years. But the big question still begged to be answered. 'How did I get here from the Memorial?' The 'memory' she had received at the Conclave passed before her again, and Azalea washed it away with a large swig of her drink. 'How much time has passed? Did I survive activating the Purifier? Perhaps…we left…' These thoughts raced through her mind and soon enough she found herself with an empty tankard.

Lifting her head, Azalea glanced at the others around the table. Leliana and Josephine had there heads together over some paperwork. They never stopped working it seemed. Cullen and Cassandra were sitting next to each other, not really talking but every now and then making the odd comment. Both were casting worried glances her way every few minutes. The last was Varric who still sat across from her. He was laughing at Dogmeat, every now and again tossing him a small sliver of meat from his plate. 'Meat.' Azalea's eyebrows crinkled as she thought about it. It wasn't bad, but it was definitely different. That was another thing that sent her mind reeling, they had really weird looking cattle.

Azalea thought back to her first encounter with a 'Druffalo'. She had thought it was a variant of a Bighorner at first, and was really concerned seeing a man herding them out in an open field in front of Haven's gates. The only problem was that they all seemed so docile. While she had personally never seen a Bighorner, long talks with Moira about various Waste creatures had given her enough to go off of. Thomas, a young recruit, had told her that Druffalo and Rams were the main source of food in this area. He even pointed the special cow they had received as a gift to her. He was rather excited about that, apparently they were reserved for nobility. It resembled a small Brahmin, but it only had one head. She had made comment about it without thinking and Thomas only looked at her as if she said they should be shitting gold. Suffice to say the recruits had something new to talk about. 'Oh how their savior was CRAZY!' When Varric had heard of it he tracked her down just to ask himself. "What is this I've heard about two headed cattle?" The grin on his face was unbearable and Azalea was certain she had blushed deeply at the man.

"So, Herald, we have some important business to discuss." Josephine butted into her thoughts. 'Herald? Who's a herald?' Azalea glanced at the woman and her insides twisted when she found Josephine looking at her.

"Are you talking to me?"

"Yes, the people have taken to calling you the Herald of Andraste—"

"And you let them?!" Azalea interrupted, she was no way in hell, a 'Herald'. Especially not to some goddess or whatever, that she's never even heard of. "Look, you know what? What they call me, I don't care. But you guys! Do. Not. Call. Me. That." She snarled. Josephine's eyes widened and she looked down. The others looked at her disapprovingly but didn't say anything. "I already have a name the people call…that's enough." Azalea sighed.

Josephine cleared her throat, calling attention back to her. "Fair enough, now the issues at hand." Picking up a piece of paper she handed it to Cassandra. "We are in sore need of horses. We have already sent scouts out to retrieve some, but as it stands, we currently have none." Cullen made a nose in the back of his throat and looked at Josephine.

"What happened to the three spare we had?"

Josephine sighed "Well one of them was stolen…another one fell to illness, and the last one is currently being used by a courier on his way to Val Royeaux. That is why we need you to go to the Hinterlands and talk with the Horsemaster, Dennet." The last bit was directed at Azalea. "While you're there, there is a chance to help with our troubles with the Chantry." Azalea raised one eyebrow at that. She knew what she meant. For the past week she was busy dodging clerics and the faithful, who tried to label her as a liar and that everything she's done blasphemy. She didn't care at first; she would simply take the long way around them down to the blacksmiths. Then when she tried to talk with Adan about the lack of proper medical knowledge, they started following her into his apothecary. In no way, shape, or form, was Adan going to let that carry on. So until they left her alone, she was banned from his work place. "She believes that we are doing good work and wishes to help." Azalea tuned back into Josephine as she passed her a sheet of paper.

One glance at the piece of paper almost sent her into another panic attack. Instead of the normal scratch she knew as English, the page was covered in blocky characters that swooped low and high not too dissimilar to old runes she had read about in the Arlington Library. With a hard swallow, she sat the paper down and looked at her nails. "I can't read that…"

Cassandra rolled her eyes and grabbed the paper. "What do you mean you can't read it?" Azalea lifted her head to look at them; they all had some form of curiosity, amusement, or disbelief written on their faces. Blushing she looked back down at her hands.

"Is it like how where were unable to read your book?" Leliana put in. Recalling how that was what initially caused her to have a panic attack, Azalea took a deep breath and nodded. Leliana pursed her lips and took the paper from Cassandra. She turned to Josephine and motioned for the papers. "Are there any more reports for her?" Josephine nodded and quickly pulled the documents out of the pile. "Until you are able to read, one of us will read the reports to you. Understand?" Everyone nodded. Leliana stood and looked around the tavern. "This first report can be read to you before you set out for the Hinterlands tomorrow morning." With a nod she motioned for Josephine to follow her.

Cullen and Cassandra both stood at the same time. "If you need me I will be out training the troops." Cullen said with a nod. Cassandra patted her on the shoulder and motioned for her to stand.

"Cassandra," Varric called. "I'll teach Mouse here how to read. Tell Josephine that." The man winked at Azalea as she walked behind Cassandra out of the tavern. Before leaving she turned to see where Dogmeat had run off to. He was lying under Varric, fast asleep. Deciding not to disturb him, she turned and jogged up to Cassandra.

"The trip to the Hinterlands is a long one, especially since we do not have horses." Cassandra started. "I will have some recruits gather supplies; you can pack up your bag in the war room while I read the report to you." Azalea nodded as the two women practically marched through the Chantry building.

Azalea stretched out the kinks in her back as she stood at Haven's gate. Dogmeat sat by her feet, almost grinning at Solas and Varric who both looked dead on their feet. When Cassandra said they would leave early, she meant early. The sun hadn't even risen over the horizon yet. Not that she minded however. Often times, she and Dogmeat would be up and on the move all the time, sometimes even before it was even technically tomorrow. Azalea smiled and happily hitched her bag higher on her shoulder. When she had been repacking the previous night, she had found the old medical book she had been reading tucked next to her frag grenades in her bed roll. While it was nothing she didn't already know, she knew of a certain old man who knew next to nothing about dealing with the sick or wounded. Adan had been all too happy to take the book off her hands. True he couldn't read it, but the book had plenty of diagrams about the human body and dealing with injuries that he could follow. That made being so far from home that much more bearable. I'll get to work translating it when I get back. With a nod she turned to a yawning Varric.

"So Varric, when will you start teaching me how to read?" Varric blinked up at the woman and rubbed his eyes.

"I'll start on our first stop in an hour or so when we set off." He yawned, "I got a real special book for you to read." Azalea nodded, the smile slowly falling from her face, she really didn't' like that glint in his eyes.

"I had heard a rumor that you were illiterate, but I was unsure if it was true." Solas was slowly waking up. The tips of his ears pink from the morning wind. Azalea grunted and looked down. She was still embarrassed that she could now be considered that.

"Ah, come on Mouse, it's nothing to be ashamed of. There are plenty of people around Thedas who can't read." Azalea didn't feel any better. It was just too weird for her—wait…Mouse? She sent him a questioning glance and he only chuckled. "Maybe while I'm teaching you, you can show me that book that Leliana mentioned yesterday."

Azalea opened her mouth to agree, when Cassandra marched up to them. "All right, everything is set. If we keep a steady pace we should be there by mid day." They all nodded and set off for the large entrance bridge. Dogmeat happily trotted about behind them, sometimes charging ahead to chase an animal. With a sigh, Azalea let the smile set on her face again. It wasn't exactly like back home, but it was close enough.

There first stop came all too soon for Azalea's tastes. It was only for about ten minutes, but she still felt they could have walked another hour before stopping. She sat on the ground next to Varric, fiddling with her Pipboy and notepad. Varric had decided that the best way to teach her would be to start with the alphabet. In total there were twenty nine letters. While the majority of the letters did correspond with letter in the English alphabet, there was no translatable form for the letters, J, Q, or V. Likewise they had one letter that had no English variant. And then there were the coupled letters. While in the English language, when you wanted to combine two sounds, you simply placed the letters that made the sounds next to each other. Here, there were letters for those sounds.

Azalea scratched her head and looked down at her translation paper. To be honest, it was more of a cheat sheet. When she couldn't get her head around the new letters, Solas had suggested that they each write the alphabet down and work through the sounds. It really helped her, since every minute she seemed to refer to the damned thing. Varric had given her a piece of paper with sentences on it, and had set her to the task of translating them to the best of her ability. There were simply sentences is like, 'The sky is blue.', 'I have an apple.', or 'She took my things.'. Varric said that when she had mastered recognizing the letters they would move onto larger words, and then onto learning proper grammar.

"We have stayed here long enough." Cassandra called. "We will take another short break just before we reach our destination." Dogmeat eager jumped up and followed her as she started down a hill and through some bushes. Since it was such a short break, they hadn't taken out any of their supplies. Azalea tucked the paper under her Pipboy. Stretching as she stood, Azalea waited for Solas and Varric to head down the hill before her.

The plant life no longer bothered her too much. Liar. Instead she made note of what she saw in the Pipboy. She took picture of everything with her Pipboys analyzer. It wasn't technically made for that purpose, but it worked. "Azalea, I have been meaning to ask you. What is that strange device on your wrist?" Solas asked as she stopped to take a picture of a bush. "I was not able to take it off of you when trying to help stabilize your mark." Azalea bit her lip, thinking hard on how she could explain it.

"It's called a Pipboy." She started. "It's given to us on our tenth birthday, marking that we were old enough to be given jobs." Licking her lips she looked down at it. "We use it to catalogue things." Not a complete lie, but she didn't want to tell him how it worked either. Solas furrowed his brows when she didn't continue. With a heavy sigh and a shake of his head, he sped up to walk beside Cassandra. Azalea still didn't like Solas all that much. Whenever they talked, she got the distinct impression that he wanted to dissect her mind. Figure out how the anomaly works. So, she didn't talk to him.

The group walked for another three hours, only stopping for a quick water break when Cassandra said they could. 'She drives a hard ship.' Azalea mused. Sure, she could walk all day, but that was on her own time. Cassandra pushed them harder than you would a stubborn Brahmin. She demanded that they keep a consistent pace so they would reach their destination that day. Which was hard for a certain midget in the group; he didn't complain, but he often shot glares at the back of the grouchy woman's head.

The sun continued to rise, and notably less snow began to litter the ground. And still, the group waked on in silence. Cassandra had told them that they would be meeting up with the scouts in less than half an hour, and was now drilling Azalea on what she could remember from the report….Which was about half. Azalea remembered that they had to get horses, and that they had to speak with some chantry woman. "Mother Giselle!" Cassandra growled out. The scout that they would be meeting with would further fill them in on the situation when they arrived. The refugees are suffering under the strain of all the fighting in the area. Azalea sighed at reciting that. It would be just like dealing with the gangs and raiders in the Waste. 'Kill the hostiles and loot their bodies.'

"That is despicable…" Cassandra muttered. Had she said that last bit out loud? Oops. Well if they had a problem with looting corpses they didn't have to watch.

Azalea walked up to the Lead Scout of the party. She was a pretty young woman, slightly shorter than Varric, with bright red hair like her own. "Cassandra tells me that you know what's going on." Azalea smiled 'She was cute.' The woman looked startled. "Sorry, I'm Azalea and your name is…"

"Inquisition Scout Harding," The woman stuttered out. "Yes…I do have some information for you. We were sent out to retrieve more horse for you but we've run into trouble."

"What kind of trouble?" Azalea asked when she paused.

"Well, with the Mage-Templar fighting…we can't get to Master Dennet. We aren't even sure if he's alive." She muttered. Azalea nodded, she could handle the fighting. "And the refugees are being seen to by Mother Giselle herself. But word is that the war is there as well."

"We'll do what we can." Azalea promised and watched Harding leave before turning to her little group. "Alright, I say we find Mother Giselle first. If she's with tending to the refugees that means there are likely to be injured; we can't let those people suffer through the fighting." The three nodded, agreeing with her. "When we're done dealing with the Templars and Mages, we'll work our way over to Dennet's and see if we can help anyone along the way." Azalea turned and headed for a ledge near the scout's camp. She surveyed the area before pointing to a statue and some building not too far away. "My guess is we should head there."

Cassandra walked to her side and looked where she pointed. "Yes, that looks like the refugee camp in the report." Azalea nodded and turned to walk down to hill. Dogmeat sniffed all around in front of the group before barking at a small hairless thing and taking off after it. With a laugh, Azalea jogged after the mutt. At the base of the hill, she found him pawing at shacks door, shoving his nose in a hole on the door.

Azalea jogged up to the door and used her knees to push of the overly excited dog away. "Hold on! I'll open it for you if you let me!" With her back on the door, she pushed open the door and jumped out of the way as he charged into the empty building. Laughing again, Azalea entered the shack and walked over to a piece of paper. With a glance, she beamed when she recognize a handful of words. "Varric! Read this." She handed the paper over before turning back to grab Dogmeat. He had the rodent clamped tightly in his mouth, back straight, as he proudly showed off his kill. "Good boy, you get to keep that." Azalea cooed at him. At her cue, Dogmeat shook the animal once before dropping him and sinking his teeth into its belly.

Turning back around, she found the group waiting outside for her and Dogmeat. Walking quickly out, she gave them a nod before heading down towards the refugee camp, whistling at Dogmeat over her shoulder. Dogmeat came bounding out, blood covering his muzzle and a chunk of meat hung out of his mouth as he charged before her. Cassandra walked up beside her with a pinched look on her face. "How long have you had that dog?" She asked.

Azalea 'hmmed' and looked up at the rocky cliffs around them. "About a year, why?"

"He is well trained, very intelligent. What kind of breed is he?" Azalea blew some air out of her cheeks at the question. 'What kind of breed…never been too interested in animals growing up.'

Azalea scrunched her nose and shook her head. "I'm not sure, I always just called him a mutt to be honest." Cassandra nodded but frowned before looking forward. They stopped short however, when Dogmeat crouched in front of them and began to stalk forward. Azalea recognized this behavior, so even before the sound of fighting hit her ears she pulled out her pistol.

"There's trouble ahead! Be ready!" With that she charged ahead of the others after Dogmeat.

I will return after December don't worry.

I want to try and write the next five chapters before I begin uploading again. I plan to add some romance soon.

Thanks to everyone who reviewed.